Their overhead costs aren't applied, so I used a rough revenue-based estimation to estimate how much of it was WoW's ('WoW revenue'/'ActiBlizz revenue' = 33,72%).
Costs: $61 million ('cost of sales') $41 million (33,72% of 'product development') $37,4 (33,72% of 'sales and marketing') and $37,4 (33,72% of 'general and administrative') = $176,8 million in costs.
That is $112,2 million in profit, with about 38,8% profit margin.
Wait.. what?
You used a "rough revenue-based estimation". Meaning you just made up all of the figures?
I see that $61 million is the only true figure that you used from their Earnings Report, then you just pulled "$41", "$37,4", and "$37,4" out of the air. It took me 5 minutes of research and discover the actual costs of WoW development and upkeep, which was directly from Blizzard's mouth. It amounts to less than $51 million per year, and includes development costs, servers, electricity, bandwidth, infrastructure, total upkeep, marketing, all staff costs (entire payroll for everyone associated), etc.
Not only that, but you took the Cost of Sales, Product Development and G&A Costs from ALL of ACTIVISION BLIZZARD, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES. Niiiiice. The figures in that blog post were related to World of Warcraft alone.
You were right that it took less time for me to show that the blogger didn't know what he was talking about at all than write my own equivalent.
If you had taken more time to research and invested more humility in your writing, I would have been more inclined to believe random forum poster x or random blogger y.
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You used a "rough revenue-based estimation". Meaning you just made up all of the figures?
I see that $61 million is the only true figure that you used from their Earnings Report, then you just pulled "$41", "$37,4", and "$37,4" out of the air. It took me 5 minutes of research and discover the actual costs of WoW development and upkeep, which was directly from Blizzard's mouth. It amounts to less than $51 million per year, and includes development costs, servers, electricity, bandwidth, infrastructure, total upkeep, marketing, all staff costs (entire payroll for everyone associated), etc.
Not only that, but you took the Cost of Sales, Product Development and G&A Costs from ALL of ACTIVISION BLIZZARD, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES. Niiiiice. The figures in that blog post were related to World of Warcraft alone.
If by "slightly" you mean by hundreds of millions, then yes. But not knowing diddly-squat about accounting and/or finance is alright.
If you had taken more time to research and invested more humility in your writing, I would have been more inclined to believe random forum poster x or random blogger y.